We are very proud that neuro-oncology clinical research practitioner, Lillie Pakzad-Shahabi, has been awarded the North West London Clinical Research Awards (NWL CRN) 2020 Rising Star award.
Lillie started life as a multidisciplinary team (MDT) co-ordinator, before joining the John Fulcher neuro-oncology lab at our Imperial Research Centre. As a Brain Tumour Research funded Clinical Research Practitioner she has focused on trial development, linking lab and clinical research and tissue-banking, as well as arranging Public Patient Involvement (PPI) sessions and lab tours.
She currently splits her time between this role and a pre-doctoral fellowship. This fellowship has led her to being the Chief Investigator (CI) for CaPaBLE, a multi-centre observational clinical study exploring new ways of assessing the quality of life in brain tumour patients and their carers.
Alongside this, she has played a key role in the development of the READER-1 phase 1 clinical trial and is the PPI lead for the GlioCova project.
Most recently she has submitted a Research for Patient Benefit (RfPB) grant to the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to explore patient and carer views on the feasibility of neuro-oncology trials.
Having moved up through the ranks to, now, designing her own trials Lillie is always ready for a new challenge, no matter how big or difficult, and is motivated by a huge interest in the quality of life of brain tumour patients. Asked about her award she said that she was “amazed but very grateful for this unexpected honour” and that she was “just going to carry on doing what I am doing.”
Related reading:
- The Brain Tumour Research Centre at Imperial College London
- CRUK funded researcher joins our Imperial team
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